Saturday, November 14, 2009

I have been looking at stout recipes for quite a while and decided to try my own. I had a few issues that I'll go through at the end, but all in all this beer turned out really good. I would like to make some minor tweaks to it next time, but will definitely be brewing this again. The following recipe was brewed 10-31-2009.

Batch size: 6.5 Gallons

Boil size: 8.6 Gallons

Boil time: 60 minutes

Efficiency: ~68%

OG 1.054

FG didn't measure... tasted OK, so kegged. ~1.015

Color (est) 37.0L

Grain bill

2 Row Base malt11 pounds

Chocolate malt1.5 pounds

Crystal 120L1 pound

Flaked oats1 pound

Roasted Barley.25 pounds

Hops

1 oz Columbus FWH (12.6%, whole leaf)

1 oz Columbus 60 min (12.6%, whole leaf)

1 oz Ahtanum10 min (6%, whole leaf)

Yeast

Wyeast 1056

Fermented 8 days and kegged on 11-9-2009

Forced carbonated for 5 days and enjoying now!

The beer tastes great. It has a nice roasted and a slight hop scent. The head is thick and light brown as you can see from the pictures. The oats really bring out a thick and full mouth feel. It has a deep bitter chocolate taste and finishes with coffee fading into a hoppy bitterness.

I had some issues in the brewing process. I'm working on getting my efficincy up over 70%, so I really slowed down my sparge. I sparged with 5.5 gallons for 50 min and I think that it helped remove a lot of the sugars I was leaving behind in the past. The issue is that I left my brew calculator at 6.5 gallons when I wrote the recipe for 5.5 gallons. I was shooting for OG of 1.07, but the final result was good by my OG was low, which makes my efficiency look bad, and worst of all I had to toss about a gallon of wort.

Here are a couple things I may change next time I brew this beer.

I will have my calculator set correctly so my final volume is correct.

I would either add lactose to change to a milk stout, or add cocoa somewhere in the boil to bring out more of a chocolate flavor.

I definitely would move the final hop addition to 20 min to reduce the hop finish and may reduce the AAU's of the final addition. It's good, but I don't think it fits the style very well.

I hope you enjoy the recipe. Feel free to brew this and comment with any thoughts, suggestions, or questions.

Sunday, October 18, 2009

I've been a home brewer for several years now. I have a simple 3 stage, gravity feed, 5 gallon system. I've had several beers that came out really nice, but i seem to lose my recipes. I thought this would be a good place to post them for me to remember and others to use. More to come in the next couple weeks.